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@sakodc Hi Sascha. Apologies for the delayed reply. Have you seen our Time Sculpting features? You may be interested in seeing the video on Time Shifting and Time Cropping.

If the Time Sculpting features do not suite your needs, You will need to make use of Templater’s ExtendScript API. You essentially write ExtendScript code that makes use of Templater’s in-memory job data, and use that data to set specific layers’ In and Out points.

You would use the $D.job.get("column-name") method to get the data from the job’s column into a variable. Then you can use that data to set an In point or Out point of a specific layer.

Does this help?

@Tasnadi-Otto Just to clarify, are you talking about pixel dimensions (length and width) or time/duration? If you’re talking about time, you can do what Arie suggested, or, as a workaround, you could set up your text layer(s) and have it mapped in multiple comps, each comp having a different duration, then use comp switching feature to swap between different precomps using the method shown in this demonstration.

@Tasnadi-Otto That’s a tough one, but Templater has what is called Time Sculpting features, in addition to an ExtendScript API.

With the ExtendScript API, you can change a layer’s duration via ExtendScript registered to Templater’s “After Update” event — I imagine you would create an algorithm that would assess how long a text layer’s duration should be given the length of text string. Then, you can invoke the Time Sculpting rule logic from within your ExtendScript so that all layers conform accordingly.

Does this help?

Thanks!

@dwalters There are videos demonstrating setting a target as well as switching between project files. For data in expressions, see the link in my previous post under the section “referencing dynamic text layers.”

@dwalters Definitely an older version. We removed the dynamic color checkbox because it was redundant to have it appear when Templater Settings is applied to a Solid. So, you don’t need to do that step. The dynamic color option will “be on” whenever you apply Templater Settings to a solid.

@dwalters You can select individual comps within a project to re-version with the target property, or you can switch between projects with the aep property (and you can combine the two). Templater will parse through the entire project, not just the target comp, so you can set up really complex, modular systems that all update at once. You can use data from your data source to drive you controller/checkbox layouts.

@dwalters Definitely watch out for the formulas in Sheets when using Bot. Also, you can use a local JSON formatted file to avoid that issue and to gain some flexibility in how your data is structured. In a JSON file, each “object” can have different properties so you’re not locked down to a two-dimensional data structure like an array. You can use the aep property to have Templater load the correct project file for that asset. So the JSON source might look something like:

[
  {
      "aep" : "C:\\templates\\summary.aep"
    , "score": "43"
    , "time": "1 hour"
  },
  {
    "aep": "C:\\templates\\team-stats.aep"
   ,"player-count": "22"
   ,"team-name": "Longhorns"
   ,"city": "Austin, Texas"
  }
]

So you can see there are two “jobs” in the data souce, but from job-to-job there are different properties. Google Sheets is easy, but you do gain some flexibility using JSON.

@dwalters You can use spreadsheet formulas to access data in other worksheets within a “master” worksheet. Just be aware that if you are using the Bot to process your jobs, a quirk of the Google Sheets API makes it so that Templater must “flatten” the formulas in any row that it processes. If you are using the Render/Replicate to process jobs, you don’t need to worry about that particular issue.

Have you taken a look at your templater.log file for any clues as to the issue? In that log file, it will show you exactly what it attempts to execute in the shell. You can copy and paste that from the log to a new terminal window and try it there. Keep in mine that the environment that Templater executes in might be different from the environment in your own Terminal shell. Maybe something is not included in a path? I’m sure cp command is, but I’m just saying that there might be something related to environment.

Also, take a read through this to troubleshoot:

Troubleshooting Event Scripts

Please let us know if this helps.

Thanks!